The Washington Post reports:
BP said Thursday that it has stopped oil from leaking out of its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. The gusher has been throttled for the first time since the April 20 blowout on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.
Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice president of exploration and production, told reporters that a new capping mechanism shut off the flow of crude from the Macondo well at 3:25 p.m. EDT. He made the announcement after engineers gradually shut off valves to test the pressure. The engineers are monitoring the pressure to see whether the new cap and the well bore hold.
BP began the pressure test Thursday afternoon on the blown-out well, ending two days of delays, one caused by government fears that the test could backfire and the other by a leak discovered in part of the well’s new cap.
“Although it cannot be assured, it is expected that no oil will be released to the ocean during the test,” BP said in a guarded statement announcing the start of the procedure. “Even if no oil is released during the test, this will not be an indication that oil and gas flow from the wellbore has been permanently stopped.”
Read the full Washington Post story or see CNN’s live video feed of the capped oil well.
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